Chapter Fifty Four: It's the Landing

"So...what do we do now?" Hidden Moon asked, her expression grim on her monitor.

Ronin looked off into the distance as Delta responded, her voice small and quiet, "Mira and Azue's mission had the intended effect...any troops outside of the city can't get back in through the outposts the Cathols have set up...the other part of the mission...could have gone better…"

Silas slammed her hand on the desk and shouted, "That goddamn idiot!"

Sellius, head down, focused on his blade said, without looking up, "Things make even less sense than they did before the mission. Trigger going rogue and hunting Cathols...not great, but it's a thing he might do...him joining the Cathols? I don't think there's anything they could threaten him with that would make him join up with them."

Angel spoke, her voice contemplative, "Why do you assume they threatened him?"

 Ronin rubbed the bridge of his nose and tuned everyone out while he tried to think.

This had to be the fifth time they'd had this conversation over the course of the last three days and Ronin was no closer to answers, or a solution to the overarching problem, than he was the first time they'd discussed it.

Moira spoke from her newly dedicated monitor, "With all due respect, we've been talking in circles. We are running out of time and there are only seven days left before the Cathols use their weapon on the city."

She was another conundrum that Ronin had yet to find any means to explain.

Where had she come from?

Why was she living in his head, his body?

Why could she monitor and, to various extents, control the Aether in his body?

Ronin tuned in to hear Hidden Moon say, "To make things worse, this Forsaken Alchemist, Trigger and Liliana have all been terrorizing Guildless neighborhoods."

Muttering to himself, Ronin said, "What else could go wrong?"

 Angel cleared her throat and said, "Well..the Cathols have been mobilizing their soldiers still in the city. They've been gathering in the church you guys attacked for the last couple of days now."

Ronin stood up and said, "I'm going for a walk, I need to be alone...as alone as I can be, all things considered."

Hidden Moon started to say something as Ronin left, his mind on his thoughts, not even hearing her begin speaking.

As Ronin approached the elevator, he heard footsteps and Moira said, "Silas is approaching."

Waiting for the door to open without turning toward her, Ronin said, "I'm pretty sure everyone can repeat themselves without me."

With a grunt, clearly pushing herself, Silas pushed Ronin into the wall and said, "What the hell is your problem?!"

 Turning to her, he responded, "I'm sick to death of that conversation, Silas!"

Eyes welling up with tears, Silas shouted back, "You think we're not?! You think you're the only one with unanswered questions? Do you think you're the only one who's afraid that you killed this city?! We're all pretty damn scared, Ronin!"

Letting himself fall back into the wall as the elevator opened, he felt water leak out of the open door as she said, "Ronin...your...our Liliana has been killing people…"

Looking up at her sadly, he felt a tremor of something he didn't recognize run through his body as she continued, "Our brother is a monster, and I can't help but get the feeling that it's something we could have prevented!"

Her voice wavered as tears began to slip down her reddened cheeks, "Sellius is ready to start killing wholesale to save him, Scalpel is talking about capturing and torturing people! Hidden Moon is talking about starting a city wide war and Angel is saying she'll kill everyone in the Horizon Suns if that happens! All of this is HAPPENING while you stare off into the distance like nothing is going on!"

Openly sobbing now, she started to hit Ronin in the chest weakly as she continued, the water from the elevator pooling around their feet, "Delta doesn't show it, but she's dying inside and Mira and Azue have barely been around the last couple of days! Everyone is trying to find solutions and you're just doing NOTHING!"

He slid down the wall as she struck him, bringing her down with him into the growing puddle of red water, the feeling growing as he landed.

Silas stopped hitting him and fell into his chest, sobbing loudly in the quiet hallway as he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her forehead gently.

Tears began to fall from his eyes as he said, "I've been trying to find something...but everything I think of leads me back to one question."

She fought to keep her sobs quieter, but doing so only made her cry harder as he continued, "Why? Why Trigger? Why Liliana? WHY?!"

His voice rang out through the hallway as someone spoke from the elevator, "Why are you yelling?"

Silas looked up, her breath stuttering and slow, and saw someone from the Full Moon that she almost recognized.

Ronin looked down and saw that the water they were sitting in was blood and looked up, following her gaze and said, "Rav?"

 Rav stood in the elevator and said, "Hey kid, haven't seen you in a little while now. I'd hoped you be dropping by again, I wanted to share a drink with you again."

Flickers of the night flashed through Ronin's head, fighting off the dizziness from the fight with the man in the ring and Trigger, digging through the haze the alcohol had left in his memories.

Around him, the man he'd fought, Rav and Amy sat down after his friends had left to go do the various things he'd remembered them doing as he came out of his blackout.

She leaned in and whispered in his ear, "As incredibly arousing as it is to see you sitting in a pool of blood, I'm gonna have to ask you to get up, I got a problem here."

Looking past her, Ronin saw a boy handcuffed to the railing and screaming muffled threats into a black cloth gag that'd been tied around his mouth.

As he screamed, black fire flickered in and out of existence along his hands as Ronin realized that his eyes were glowing bright red, bright enough to make out even against the light of the elevator.

Looking back at him, Rav said, "Turns out my brother-in-law needs more help than he knows."

Pulling the gag off his mouth, the boy shouted, "I'll KILL THAT BITCH!"

Rolling her eyes, Rav flicked him in the ribs and he screamed loud, stopping only to cough out blood as she said, "Oops, a little too hard, may have broken something there."

Turning back to Ronin with a cocky smile on her face, she said, "I hear your friend Scalpel runs a pretty decent infirmary here, though I doubt it'd be anything interesting compared to what we've got back at the Bureau, but that damn Shiku won't let me bring anyone back with me."

Silas jumped off of Ronin and ran down the hall to get Scalpel while Ronin sat in shock, disbelieving what he'd just heard.

He looked up at her as he mumbled, "The Bureau?"

Putting a hand over her mouth playfully, Rav said, her languid crimson eyes flashing excitedly, "Oops again, wasn't supposed to mention that."

Pushing himself up, Ronin glared at her and said, "You're from a Bureau location away from the school?"

Waving her hand in front of her face dismissively, Rav said, "Kid...the school was our smallest location, not to mention the furthest from what we're all working toward."

Rage overwhelmed him as he pushed her into the elevator, slamming her against the wall as he shouted, "Where the hell were you when we were attacked!"

Ignoring his aggression entirely, Rav pulled him closer to her and wrapped her leg around his waist as she said, "Ugh, god, it's been so long since I got some good, hard, hate sex in a pool of someone's blood."

Ronin pulled out a sword from his inventory, glimmering white in the light as the handcuffed boy said, "Yeah, kill her, she deserves it too!"

Smirking at him, Rav said, "Strange, nobody mentioned that you carried any kind of full moon weaponry."

Ronin's face contorted in confusion as he said, "This blade isn't made of full moon Aether, it's pure Aetheric energy!"

Rav pulled him even tighter to her and said, "I'd look at it before you do anything you can't take back. Where I'm from, trying to kill someone is basically proposing to them."

Gently flicking his chest, she sent him across the elevator and slamming into the wall and said, "Besides, I don't think you've got it in you to kill me. You're simply not strong enough, don't you think?"

Gasping for air after her attack, Ronin looked at the blade and saw that it was indeed made of full moon Aether.

Taking a deep breath, Rav said, "If you wanna have some quick fun in Exeus's blood, we can do that though."

Scalpel walked in and said, "Ronin, keep it in your pants, Silas says this boy is dying."

Rav winked at Ronin and mouthed, shivering and clutching her sides gently, "So hot!"

Ronin looked at Scalpel and, scowling angrily, said, "She's from another Bureau branch."

Scalpel nodded and mumbled, "Mmhmm."

Taken aback, Ronin asked, "You knew?"

Scalpel shook her head as she worked and said, "Nope. We all knew that the Bureau had branches in different places around the world, it's not surprising that they'd show up eventually."

Sighing gently, Ronin said, "They could have come when we were being attacked."

Scalpel shook her head and said, "Not likely. We're all supposed to be more or less self-sufficient for the precise reason that if one of our branches is destroyed, we don't give away our locations to attackers."

The boy stood as Scalpel worked on him and Rav said, "You're staying here."

Ronin looked at him and asked, "What's his story anyway?"

Glaring at Ronin, Exeus said, "That bitch, the one covered in steam, couldn't kill me so she killed my family in front of me."

"Couldn't kill you?" Scalpel asked curiously.

Nodding, the boy said, "Every time I died, I'd wake up a few seconds later. It was like living out your worst nightmares."

Scalpel pulled out a syringe and drew the boy's blood as she said, "Well that's odd. I'll look into that and see what I can find."

Rav nodded and said, "I'm pretty sure you won't find anything interesting in his blood though."

"Why's that?" Scalpel asked as she started packing her tools.

"He's only waking up now, it'll be awhile before he starts to change."

Looking at her skeptically, Scalpel asked, "Waking up?"

Rav nodded and said, "Yup." 

Looking at the kid, struggling against his handcuffs, she asked, "You afraid to die, Exeus?"

Ronin looked at her in shock as he heard the words that'd been plaguing him come from her mouth and the boy said, "Yes. I'm afraid to die without getting my revenge on the woman who killed my family!"

 Rav leaned in close to his face and stared into his bright red eyes and said, "Mmmm...not yet. You're not really afraid yet...but you will be."

 Without warning, she rammed her hand through the boy's heart and spoke gently into his ear, "It's not the fall that kills you."